Thursday night on ESPN: Good call for hokies

Virginia Tech credits the growth of its football program, in no small part, to the exposure it has enjoyed on ESPN's Thursday night games stretching back to the Hokies' years in the Big East.

Sticking with a successful formula, Tech will appear on back-to-back Thursday night broadcasts in November against Maryland and Miami.

The Hokies were mavericks back in the day, a time when many universities and conferences shied away from ESPN's weekday prime-time stage.

Schools worried about traffic gridlock created by arriving fans and employees and students who were leaving campus for the day. They expressed pious (and phony) concerns that the athletes' academic schedules would be disrupted by a midweek game.

What's more, tradition held that college games be played on Saturday afternoons. Anybody who departed from the custom in order to suit up on a school night appeared needy and desperate.

But attitudes changed. Money and TV, as usual, trumped tradition and good judgment. Now the inhibitions some schools experienced are long gone. ESPN's Thursday night games have been around since 1985, and this season, every BCS conference but the Big Ten will be represented during the 15-week run.

North Carolina State and South Carolina led off the schedule last night, while ESPN2 offered a bonus of Oregon State and Stanford.

Not great attractions, but as appetizers go, tasty enough.

For some schools and conferences, besides the obvious benefit of being the only game Thursday night, the exposure they receive alters public perceptions in their favor.

Last night was the 58th time an ACC team has played before ESPN's Thursday night cameras. The primetime spotlight provides the conference with a veneer of significance, when, in truth, the ACC, compared with some other BCS conferences, is a mediocre league with a relatively provincial following. TV provides a false image.

At any rate, some things haven't changed over the years: football players still have to get up on the Friday morning following a Thursday night game to attend classes (sure they do). Or they miss classes altogether in order to bus or fly home.

If like me, you still have a problem with this, consider yourself quaint.

Baseball's instant replay, introduced Thursday, will be used on disputed home runs, with reviews expected to take only a couple minutes. Uh-huh. Sure.

Crew chiefs have the power to order replays, but what if a manager who is playing for time in order to get a pitcher warmed up in a tight spot comes out of the dugout to demand a review where none is warranted?

Will the umpires relent? And how long will that discussion last? Two minutes more? Longer?

This isn't to say that the replay system is a bad idea. Baseball needs to take advantage of technology to get home run calls right, but at the same time, by opening the door to video review, baseball is inviting fans to wonder over time why other dubious plays are not covered by the replay rules.

No reasonable person wants umpires to go under the hood for disputed calls at second base.

At the same time, anyone who watches even a little televised baseball is witness to slow-motion replays of base runners being called out on phantom tags.

Umpires blow calls that are never argued by players or managers.

Mostly, that's a good thing. Let's not even try to imagine a world where games are stopped for reviews every time a runner appears to beat the tag but is called out, or somebody suspects that a middle infielder has failed to make contact with the bag on a double-play pivot.

Under that kind of system, games would take an extra hour to complete.

Ironically, it's the erratic quality of umpiring that will protect us from an expanded and chaotic replay system.

Bob Molinaro, (757) 446-2373, bob.molinaro@pilotonline.com